My musings on the New Testament, Early Christianity, Religion, Literature, and Other Phenomena and Ephemera.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Leviathan vs. Behemoth

I was reading a bit of Leviticus Rabbah and found a gem of a passage:

R. Judan b. R. Simeon said: Behemoth and the Leviathan are to engage in a wild-beast contest before the righteous in the Time to Come, and whoever has not been a spectator at the wild-beast contests of the heathen nations in this world will be accorded the boon of seeing one of the World to come. (Leviticus Rabbah 13.3)

How cool is that? Behemoth vs. Leviathan--the great, untamable beasts described at the end of Job! Come one, come all for this once in an afterlife-time event! It is like King Kong versus Godzilla! It is also an interesting view of the afterlife: it is compensation for this life. By giving up the animal fights of the arena in this life (reference to Roman practices), one gets to the see the ultimate beast-fight in the world to come. (Leviticus Rabbah, by the way, predicts that they will kill each other in this contest.)

1 comment:

Well seeing as these are both sea monsters, it may make for difficult viewing. Maybe James Cameron can film it for screening at the meal afterwards when righteous folks can will feast on the creatures' mates who have been preserved in salt & ice (Baba Batra 74b).

About Me

I have a Ph.D. in Religion from Columbia University. I am a visiting assistant professor at Illinois College. I have also taught at the University of Mississippi, Illinois Wesleyan University, and Columbia University. My research focuses on the New Testament and emergent Christian interactions with ancient Judaism in their Greco-Roman and ancient Near Eastern environments.